In Silence
by Bishop.AG
Summary: To the children taken in by the Social Welfare Agency, becoming a cyborg is a second chance at life. But what happens when on the other side of the world, in the US-based Rehabilitation Branch, a cyborg awakes as "broken merchandise," with defects cyborg tech cannot fix? What kind of life are they destined to live?


John Amsel straightened out his tie before sinking into the single chair placed in front of the bed, where a teenage girl swam in a drug-induced sleep. The midday sun shone through half-drawn blinds, illuminating her peaceful features as well as casting a warm light on the otherwise sterile room. Empty space stretched into each direction beside the bed, which was crowded by the monolithic colors of hospital machinery. The scale of the room, wide windows and a few television screens were the best efforts of the staff to convince their patients that it wasn't _really_ a little hospital room. That it wasn't so bad to be there.

Amsel had never liked hospitals. From painful shots as a child to the very adult grief of losing friends, family and coworkers, he didn't have the best history with hospitals. He thought it was pretty understandable that he was so anxious about what would happen to this particular girl. Planted in the sheets like a flower that had yet to bloom, she was the only thing of any importance in the room. The machines beeped rhythmically to remind the rest of the world that the girl was indeed alive, as her chest rose and fell motions so gentle they were barely discernible.

It was hard to believe that most of her was artificial. The Rehabilitation Branch mostly utilized what they called 'Second Gen Interim' cyborgs, improvements of the latest designs put out by the SWA. From what Amsel knew, that meant they were a bit older than the typical adolescent cyborg candidate, and their lifespans were improved. He had asked how much, but the most specific answer was, "Enough."

Though Amsel couldn't say if cyborgs dreamed or not, the girl looked peaceful. The epicanthic folds along her eyelids and a general paleness to her round features marked her as Asian - the dossiers Amsel had glanced at said Japanese in particular. She was delicate, and the needles and lines plugged into her arms were grotesque, out of place.

Her limbs stirred, causing the man's grey eyes to dart downward to the sheets.

"_We're registering alpha brainwaves. She's waking up," _said tinny voice, echoing through the room as if projecting from no place in particular. Amsel reflexively turned to face the 'mirror' that dominated the wall, trying to see the doctor hiding within it. It felt as if he was expected to follow an exacting script with the awakening girl, down to the instruction that he was to bring a handgun for her when she woke. The weapon's plastic case rested on the bed, it's weight disconcerting.

Somehow he wasn't inclined to agree with the situation. The girl - Lucinda, the documents read, wouldn't wake up with everything the other cyborgs did. Both in the stateside Rehabilitation Branch and the European 'Social Welfare Agency,' the cyborg subjects were young children that had befell immense injury or illness. A ballerina that had leapt off a building after realizing she had a career-ending cancer, for example. Or one of the countless victims of gang violence. Their pasts were a tragedy all in their own, but these agencies gave them a second chance. Wounds were mended, painful histories swept away. They started over from a clean slate.

All except for Lucinda, that was. This was her second activation. The first time around, she had been silent as well. The reasons _why_ were a mystery to the doctors, but the detriment to her lifespan a second 'reboot' involved was deemed too significant. This new life of hers would be one without word or song. After all, who wanted a broken cyborg?

Amsel didn't really know himself. He turned his gaze from the pane of disguised glass to find Lucinda's brown eyes staring at him.

When a person woke up, it generally wasn't all at once. He was used to a pervasive grogginess as dreams did their best to cling to consciousness and sensation wasn't totally returned to limbs. Amsel often wondered why waking was so memorable when the often protracted act of falling asleep vanished from memory in a quite literal blink. But he found himself entirely confused by Lucinda.

It was as if a switch had been flicked, allowing her consciousness to flood into a waiting shell. On, or off. There was no in-between where the girl clung to her pillow... or her dreams, if she had any. It would be a stretch to say that the idea of a grogginess existed for her. Those soft brown orbs of hers were fully awake, intelligent and curious. Absent of anger or sadness at waking up, entirely trusting, it seemed. She didn't open her mouth, or even blink.

The snowball that comprised Amsel's ignorance as to how the RB worked was quickly picking up mass, and the lines age carved into his face quickly deepened in worry and consternation. But he forced a smile when a look of concern registered in Lucinda's features. She wrung her hands in her lap, her skin just as tidy and free of imperfection as the sheets.

He realized then that the girl's hands were her best way to communicate. Lucinda supposedly came with sign language 'installed,' but much like the rest of the program, it was all uncertain to Amsel. He did his best not to sound incredulous as he muttered, "Do you know how to sign?"

She held up the pinky of one hand.

_I..._

Lucinda's hand slowly balled into a fist, her thumb protruding between index finger and thumb.

_T..._

The handler watched her slow, but precise motions in silence, eventually realizing what she was spelling out.

_I-t-h-i-n-k-s-o-b-u-t-I..._

Lucinda flushed with embarrassment and stopped short, cocking her head to the side in confusion as words refused to form themselves.

Amsel had half-expected the difficulty, so he placed a notepad in her lap, along with an uncapped pen. The girl smiled brightly and dipped her head in a thankful nod, scribbling on the pad.

She then passed the notepad back. Amsel had to squint to read the messy scrawls, which he assumed stemmed from her 'programming.' _I know what the letters are - but how do I make words out of them? Do I just spell everything out? Why don't I know? Is this normal? _He wondered for a moment if Lucinda realized her writing was 'messy,' and like many a handler before him, Amsel was confronted with the dilemma of correcting her errors, or being more thoughtful to the first feelings she was experiencing in her new life.

Then again, the more pertinent issue was that the handler's knowledge of sign language was mostly comprised of a single night studying a few reference books. So when he handed the notepad back to Lucinda, it read: 'I don't know much about sign language myself. Think we could learn together?'

* * *

**August 8th, 2009 (One Day Prior)  
Balboa Naval Medical Center  
San Diego, California  
2013 Hours  
**

* * *

"Height?"

"Keep it the same."

"Build?"

"Same."

"Skintone?"

"I don't see how that's relevant..."

The response elicited an exasperated sigh from Edward Kostas, head physician at the facility. He was responsible for final changes to cyborgs before they were given to handlers, but Amsel's constant commentary was wearing thin his patience. Kostas had a farmer's tan and a full beard - he seemed more a farmer than a medical professional, and he certainly didn't sugarcoat things. "I am obligated to run all these questions by you, so I could do without the snarking, Mr. Amsel."

He only shrugged in response. Past dry commentary, the man had little desire to interact at all. There was an armed guard just outside, and a panic button presumably hidden somewhere by the computer. His arrival into the Rehabilitation Branch had been ... rough, to put it lightly. The FBI didn't want him any longer, so the RB was just a good place to dump the agent. Amsel habitually glanced down at his breast pocket, a paler patch of fabric marking where an FBI badge normally sat.

Further questioning from the doctor took Amsel from his brief reverie. "Conditioning?" Kostas intoned gruffly. The light of his monitor reflected off a pair of reading glasses, the computer being the sole source of light in the room, which was dominated along one wall by a one-way mirror. Beyond it sat an assortment of medical equipment and the shape of someone Amsel presumed was his charge.

"That's the severity of their medications, right?"

"Correct."

"As low as possible."

"I can try that," the doctor said, adjusting his glasses as he entered the information into a nearby computer, hunting for the keys in a decidedly familiar manner for Amsel. "Any reason why, Mr. handler?"

"I think an independent touch is needed for the sort of work the branch wants us to do."

Kostas rolled arched a brow, staring at Amsel's reflection against the computer monitor. "Gunmen need to be independent in this day an age?" He quipped.

"Yeah. They do." Amsel's tone was flat, and absent of much mirth. It was silent for some time, before Kostas hit enter, two images blinking into view on the screen.

On the left, the handler saw his own mugshot from happier days. His short black hair was absent of much white, while fewer wrinkles were showing around his grey eyes. The man on the screen, unlike him, had managed a shave recently. His parents off in Hamburg would have approved.

Amsel turned to the other face. It was a picture a teenaged girl. A familiar one; he had taken the better part of a day to pick her out of a list of many other girls and boys, from the RB's seemingly endless list of candidates. He had seen the picture several times before, a grainy, magnified image of her walking along the street, caught by a traffic camera. The raven-haired girl looked carefree, lagging a few steps behind her family as they headed to an event unknown to him.

"Name?"

"Lucinda."

"Come again?" Kostas spun in his seat, resting his hands on the arms of his chair. His brow was furrowed, an irritated quirk affected one end of his mouth.

"She can have the same name. She deserves something of her old life, doesn't she?"

"Technically," the doctor begun, looking back to the screen, "She's been wiped clean. We generally object to use of old names due to the inherent connection to older memories..."

"Right," the man responded. "So the name works?"

"Yes," Kostas said tersely, "But we didn't wipe memories simply due to trauma. There's a more pertinent issue - an inability to speak has manifested itself despite a 'hard reset' to her conditioning and we're at a loss for how to resolve it."

Amsel turned to gaze out the nearby window once more. "She's mute? Deaf too?" he asked in a matter-of-fact tone.

"Mute. The cyborg is perfectly functional in other respects."

The question then, was obvious. "Is that normal?"

"In a word, no." Kostas finished a few last lines in the cyborg's programming and stood from his chair, gathering up a cup of lukewarm coffee. "Compared to conventional medicine where the primary goal of the caretaker is the best result possible for the patient, the RB wants a very specific result. Coming short of that is failure, so we have to try again and again until we get it right. Or settle for second best."

"Why settle, then?"

Kostas looked critical. "You ask a lot of questions, mister Amsel..." He paused, massaging his brow with a little sigh, "But to be _perfectly_ honest; I hate problems I can't fix. You're a Hail Mary. You know, a blind guess? It's either this, or they try to reboot her, and each time..."

Amsel nodded, running a hand through his hair. "I get you."

Kostas nodded slowly as he turned to the exit. "I'm going to get some junk they pretend is coffee. Don't touch anything."" The door slammed behind Kostas as he left, leaving the newly-assigned handler with only his thoughts, and his cyborg.

* * *

**August 9th, 2009**  
**Balboa Naval Medical Center  
San Diego, California  
1753 Hours**

* * *

_I think we can! Can we?_

Amsel read Lucinda's scrawl on the notepad and finally cracked a little smile. "We should probably get going then, shouldn't we?"

Lucinda thought he looked a lot better smiling. She beamed, feeling an unfamiliar giddiness. Happiness wasn't something that programming could express properly, it seemed. She thought the idea of perfecting her ability to communicate was a great idea, not to mention escaping the boring room already.

As her new handler collected his scant belongings, she slipped out of bed, clad only in a hospital gown. Amsel handed her a shopping bag with a change of clothes in it, and the cyborg happily fell in step with him. The handler nodded to Kostas as the two of them walked past his office.

The doctor adjusted his glasses, giving a gruff "Good luck" as the two passed by. With plenty of work to be done, he turned back to the one-way mirror viewing Lucinda's room.

Back in the early days of the Social Welfare Agency, a tradition had been established that every cyborg was given a handgun by their handler. Standard issue or purchased out of pocket, it was a symbol of the _fratello's _bond and a mark of the sort of work they were destined to do. It was wordlessly passed onto the RB, becoming a tradition in the stateside agency much like it had in the Italian one.

But right before Kostas, a plastic case sat on the recently-occupied bed, the handgun unused as Amsel and Lucinda's footsteps faded away.


End file.
